A new era of Taylor Swift is upon us—and we’re not just talking about her highly anticipated seventh album, which fans think will be titled Lover. The singer is also showing off a new publicly political side. Criticized by some for not speaking out enough during the 2016 election, Swift has more recently begun using her massive platform to let fans know where she stands on issues that are important to her.
The first signs of this new Swift emerged ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, when she endorsed the Democratic nominees from Tennessee for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. In her Instagram post containing the endorsement, she mentioned her strong belief in LGBTQ+ rights—and now she’s taking that message a step further by posting a letter to Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Republican representing her home state of Tennessee. The letter urges Alexander to support the Equality Act, which would “protect LGBTQ people from discrimination in their workplace, in their homes and in schools.”
“?HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!!!? While we have so much to celebrate, we also have a great distance to go before everyone in this country is truly treated equally. In excellent recent news, the House has passed the Equality Act, which would protect LGBTQ people from discrimination in their places of work, homes, schools, and other public accommodations,” Swift wrote in an Instagram caption for the image of the letter. “The next step is that the bill will go before the Senate. I’ve decided to kick off Pride Month by writing a letter to one of my senators to explain how strongly I feel that the Equality Act should be passed.”
In the letter, Swift first thanked Alexander for co-sponsoring a bill that celebrates the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote before going on to criticize the “Slate of Hate” in Tennessee and warning that discriminatory practices could continue to scare off large companies like Amazon, who won’t want to do business in the state. She also called discrimination against people based on “who they love” or “how they identify” as “un-American and cruel.”
Swift also called out the Trump administration directly. “I personally reject the President’s stance that his administration ‘supports equal treatment of all’ but that the Equality Act ‘in its current form is filled with poison pills that threaten to undermine parental and conscience rights.’ No,” she wrote. “One cannot take the position that one supports a community while condemning it in the next breath as going against ‘conscience’ or ‘parental rights.’ That statement implies that there is something wrong with being anything other than heterosexual and cisgender, which is an incredibly harmful message to send to a nation full of healthy and loving families with same-sex, non binary or transgender parents, sons or daughters.”
Along with urging her followers to write letters to their own senators, Swift also created a petition with Change.org for people to express their support of the Equality Act. “While there’s no information yet as to when the Equality Act will go before the Senate for a vote, we do know this: Politicians need votes to stay in office,” she wrote. “Votes come from the people. Pressure from massive amounts of people is a major way to push politicians towards positive change.”
The petition (which you can sign here) is already nearing 50,000 signatures, and fans are expressing their gratitude to Swift for speaking out. “Thank you, Taylor, for speaking up for families like mine, and all other members of the LGBTQ family. Love from Mississippi,” one commenter wrote. Another said, “So proud that someone I’ve admired for so long is taking such a strong stance to protect the rights of LGBTQ individuals. Thank you Taylor and everyone else for fighting for the LGBTQ community!”
